Jimmie Higgins eBook

thrust in. One of them, “Wild Bill”,
feeling himself for a moment released from the grip
of his captors, raised his voice, shouting through
the wire grating of the wagon: “I denounce
this outrage! I am a free American—­”
And suddenly Jimmie, who was next in the wagon, felt
himself flung to one side, and a policeman leaped
by him, and planted his fist with terrific violence
full in the orator’s mouth. “Wild
Bill” went down like a bullock under the slaughter-man’s
axe, and the patrol-wagon started up, the cry of its
siren drowning the protests of the crowd.

Poor Bill! He lay across the seat, and Jimmie,
who had to sit next to him, caught him in his arms
and held him. He was quivering, with awful motions
like a spasm. He made no sound, and Jimmie was
terrified, thinking that he was dying. Before
long Jimmie felt a hot wetness stealing over his hands,
first slimy, then turning sticky. He had to sit
there, almost fainting with horror; he dared not say
anything, for maybe the policeman would strike him
also. He sat, clutching in his arms the shaking
body, and whispering under his breath, “Poor
Bill! Poor Bill!”

V

They came to the station-house, and Bill was carried
out and laid on a bench, and the others were stood
up before the desk and had their pedigrees taken.
Gerrity demanded indignantly to be allowed to telephone,
and this demand was granted. He routed Lawyer
Norwood from a party, and set him to finding bail;
and meantime the prisoners were led to cells.

They had been there only a couple of minutes when
there came floating through the row of steel cages
the voice of a woman singing. It was Comrade
Mabel Smith in that clear sweet voice they had so
often listened to on “social evenings”
in the local. She was singing the Internationale:

Arise, ye prisoners of starvation.
Arise, ye wretched of the
earth!

The sound thrilled them to the very bones, and they
joined in the chorus with a shout. Then, of course,
came the jailer: “Shut up.”
And then again: “Shut up!” And then
a third time: “Will ye shut up?”
And then came a bucket of water, hurled through the
cell bars. It hit Jimmie squarely in the mouth,
and in the words of the poet, “the subsequent
proceedings interested him no more!”

About midnight came Lawyer Norwood and Dr. Service.
Both of these men had protested against the street-speaking
at this time; but of course, when it came to comrades
in trouble, they could not resist the appeal to their
sympathies. Such is the difficulty of entirely
respectable and decorous “parlour” Socialists,
in their dealings with the wayward children of the
movement, the “impossibilists” and “direct
actionists” and other sowers of proletarian wild
oats. Dr. Service produced a wad of bills and
bailed out all the prisoners, and delivered himself
of impressive indignation to the police-sergeant,
while waiting for an ambulance to carry “Wild
Bill” to the hospital. Jimmie Higgins,
who had always hitherto shouted with the “wild”
ones, realized suddenly how pleasant it is to have
a friend who wears black broadcloth, and carries himself
like the drum-major of a band, and is reputed to be
worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars.